Got a website? Get gadgets.

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Google Gadgets are miniature-sized devices that offer cool and dynamic content—they can be
games, news clips, weather reports, maps, or most anything you can dream up. They’ve been around
for a while, but their reach got a lot broader last week when we made it possible for anyone to
add gadgets to their own webpages. Here’s an example of a flight status tracker, for instance,
that can be placed on any page on the web.

Anyone can search for gadgets to add to their own webpage in our directory of
gadgets for your webpage.
To put a gadget on your page, just pick the gadget you like, set your preferences, and
copy-and-paste the HTML that is generated for you onto your own page.

Creating gadgets for others isn’t hard, either, and it can be a great way to get your content in
front of people while they’re visiting Google or other sites. Here are a few suggestions for
distributing your own content on the Google home page or other pages across the web:

• Create a Google Gadget
  for distribution across the web. Gadgets can be most anything, from simple HTML to complex
  applications. It’s easy to experiment with gadgets – anyone with even a little bit of web design
  experience can make a simple one (even me!), and more advanced programmers can create really
  snazzy, complex ones. But remember, it’s also quick and easy for people to delete gadgets or add
  new ones too their own pages. To help you make sure your gadget will be popular across the web,
  we provide a few
  guidelines
  you can use to create gadgets. The more often folks find your content to be useful, the longer
  they’ll keep your gadget on their pages, and the more often they’ll visit your site.
• If your website has a feed, visitors can put snippets of your content on their own Google
  home pages quickly and easily, and you don’t even need to develop a gadget. However, you will be
  able to customize their experience much more fully with a gadget than with a feed.
• By putting the “Add to Google” button in a
  prominent spot on your site, you can increase the reach of your content, because visitors who
  click to add your gadget or feed to Google can see your content each time they visit the Google
  home page. Promoting your own gadget or feed can also increase its popularity, which contributes
  to a higher ranking in the directory of
  gadgets for the Google personalized home page.